DEATH IN THE PIT OF STEEL.
And Flint, now, what of him! And Waldron?
While the Air Trust plant was burning, crumbling, smashing down, what of
its masters, the masters of the world?
A sense of vast relief possessed them both, at first, as the steel door
clanged after them.
Now, for a time at least, they realized that they were safe, safe from
the People, safe from the awakened and triumphant Proletariat. Even now,
had they surrendered, they would have been spared; but nothing was
further from their thoughts than any treating with the despised and
hated enemy.
Foremost in the mind of each, now, was the thought that if they could
but stand siege, a day or so, the troops of the government--their
government and their troops, their own personal property--would
inevitably rescue them.
With this comforting belief, together they descended the long steel
staircase to the trap-door, passed through this, and climbed down the
metal ladder to the vast storage-vaults.
Here, everything was cool and quiet and well-lighted. Not yet had the
electric-generating plant been put out of action. Though all its workers
had either been drafted into the ranks of the Cosmos mercenaries, or
Herzog's regiments, or else had fled to hiding, still the huge turbines
and enormous dynamos were whirling, unattended. Thus, for the first few
minutes, in their living tomb, down over which the ruins of the now
white-hot laboratory-building had crashed, the world-masters had
electric light.
Reassured a little, they descended to the very bottom of the first huge
tank.
"God!" snarled Flint, as he breathed deeply and glared about him. "The
curs! The swine! To think of this, _this_ really happening! And to think
that if we hadn't got here just in time, they'd actually have--have used
violence on _us_--"
Waldron laughed brutally, his body still trembling and his face chalky.
His laugh echoed, hollowly, from the metal walls.
"You old fool!" he spat. "Canting old hypocrite to the last, eh?
Violence? What the devil do you expect? Rosewater and confetti? Violence
was all that ever held 'em, wasn't it? And when they slipped the leash,
naturally they retorted--that's all! Violence? You make me sick! Damned
lucky for us if we get through this yet, without violence, you whining
cur!"
Flint, for the first time hearing Waldron's honest opinion of him,
failed even to note it. All his panic-stricken ear had caught was the
note of hope, of survival.
Clutching eagerly at Waldron's sleeve, he cackled:
"If we get through? If we get through, you say? Then, in your opinion,
there _is_ a chance to get through? They can't get us here? We surely
shall be rescued?"
"Bah!" Waldron flung at him, some latent spark of courage still
smouldering in his sodden breast, whereas old Flint was craven to the
marrow. "You nauseate me! Afraid to die, eh? Well, so am I; but not so
damned paralyzed and sick with panic as all that! If you'd taken less
dope, the last twenty years, you'd have more nerve now, to face the
music! World-master, you? Eh? Playing the biggest game on earth--and
now, when things break bad, you squeal! Arrrh! You called me a quitter
once, you mealy-mouthed old Pecksniff! We'll see, now, who quits! We'll
see, at a show-down, who can face it, you or I!"
[Illustration: His fingers lost their hold--he dropped like a Plummet.]
Waldron's brutality, the hard, savage quality that all his life had made
him "Tiger" Waldron, now was beginning to reassert itself. His first
sheer panic over, a little manhood was returning. But as for Flint, no
manhood dwelt in him to be awakened. Instead, each moment found him more
abject and more pitiable. Like an old woman he now wrung his hands and
groaned, hysterically; and now he paced the steel floor of the vault
that was destined to be his tomb; and now he stopped again and stared
about him with wild eyes.
On all sides, sheer up a hundred feet or more, the smooth steel sides of
the vast oxygen tank rose, studded with long lines of rivets.
Near the top a dark aperture showed where the six-inch pipe joined the
tank; the pipe destined to fill it, when Herzog's last process--never,
now, to be completed--should have been done.
The huge floor, 150 feet in diameter, sloped gently downward toward the
center; and here yawned another pipe, covered by a grating--the pipe to
drain the liquid oxygen out to the pumping station.
So deeply set in the rock of the Niagara cliff was this stupendous
tank, and so cunningly surrounded by vacuum-chambers, that now no
faintest sound of the Falls was audible. All that betrayed the nearness
of the cataract was a faint, incessant trembling of the metal walls, as
though the solid ribs of Earth herself were shuddering with the impact
of the plunge.
Old Flint surveyed this extraordinary chamber with mingled feelings. It
surely offered absolute protection, for the present--or seemed to--but
his distressed mind conjured alarming pictures of the future, in case no
rescue came. Death by starvation, thirst and madness loomed before him.
Nervously he recommenced his pacing. Another terribly serious factor was
to be considered. He had now been three hours without his dose of
morphia, and his nerves were calling, tugging insistently for it.
"Rotten luck," he grumbled, "that I've got none with me!" Even there, in
the imminent presence of disaster and death, his mind reverted to the
poison, more necessary to him than food.
Waldron now had grown fairly calm. He stood leaning against the steel
ladder, down which they had descended. Choosing a cigar, he proceeded to
light up.
"Might as well be comfortable while we wait," said he. "I only wish we
had a couple of chairs, down here. Oversight on our part that we didn't
have some steel ones put in, and a line of canned goods and a few quarts
of Scotch. The floor's a bit damp and cold to sit on, and I want a drink
damn bad!"
Flint swung about and faced him, pale and shaking, tortured with fear
and with longing for his dope.
"You--you don't think it _will_ be long, eh, do you?" he demanded. "Not
long before we're taken out?"
Waldron shrugged his shoulders and blew a long, thin arrow of smoke
athwart the brightly-lighted air.
"Search me!" he exclaimed. "To judge by what was happening when we made
our exit, the Plant must be a mess, by this time. We seem to have been
checked, even if not mated, Flint. I must admit they caught us by
surprise. Caught us napping, damn them, after all! They were stronger
than we thought, Flint, and cleverer, and better organized. And so--"
"Don't say 'we,' curse you!" snarled Flint. "Blame yourself, if you want
to, but leave me out! _I_ knew there was trouble due, I tell you. _I_
saw it coming! Who's been trying to crush the swine completely, if not
I? Who's worked night and day to have those bills put through, and who
had the army increased, and conscription started? Who's driven the
President to back all sorts of things? Who's forced them? Who made the
National Mounted Police a reality, if not I? Damn you, don't include
_me_ in your blame!"
Waldron shrugged his shoulders, and smoked contemplatively.
"Suit yourself," he answered. "If we both die, down here, it won't
matter much either way."
"Die?" quavered the old jackal, suddenly forgetting his rage and peering
about with furtive eyes. "Did you say die, Wally? No, no! You didn't say
that! You didn't mean that, surely!"
Waldron smiled, evilly, joying in this abject fear of his hated partner.
"Oh, yes, I did, though," he retorted. "It's quite possible, you know.
In case our government--yours, if you prefer--can't get troops through,
here, or a big general revolution sweeps things, inside a day or two,
we're done. We'll starve and stifle, here, sure as shooting!"
"No, no, no! Not that, not _that_!" whimpered Flint, shuddering. "I
can't die, yet. I--I'm not ready for it! There's all that missionary
work of mine not yet done, and my huge international Sunday School
League to perfect; and there's the tremendous ten-million-dollar
Cathedral of Saint Luke the Pious that I'm having built on Riverside
Drive, and there's--"
"Cut it!" gibed Waldron, spitting with very disgust. "If your time's
come, Flint, you'll die, cathedrals or no cathedrals. Your Sunday
schools won't save you any more than my investments will--which have
largely been wine, women and song. As a matter of fact, if it comes to
starvation, if we aren't rescued and taken out from under the red-hot
wreckage that's on top of us, I'll outlive _you_! I can exist on my
surplus adipose tissue, for a while; but you--_you're_ nothing but skin
and bone. You'll starve far quicker than I will, old man."
"Don't! Don't!" implored the shaking wretch, covering his eyes with both
trembling hands.
"Moral, you oughtn't to have been a dope-fiend, all these years,"
continued Waldron, cuttingly, determined that now, once for all, his
despised partner should hear the truth. "How you've lived so long, as it
is, I don't understand. When I tried to marry Kate, and failed, I
reckoned you'd pass over in almost no time--and, by the way, that's why
I was so insistent. But you've disappointed me, Flint. Disappointed me
sorely. You still live. It won't be long, however. Down here, you know,
you simply can't get any dope. In a little while you'll begin to suffer
the torments of Hell. You'll die of starvation and drug 'yen,' Flint,
and you'll die mad, mad, _mad_! Understand me! Mad, for morphine! And I,
I shall watch you, and exult!"
Flint cringed, shuddering and stopped his ears. His partner, gloating
over him, smoked faster now. A strange light shone in his eyes. His
pulse beat faster than usual, and a certain extravagance of thought and
speech had become manifest in him.
He tried to compose himself, feeling that he must not push the cowardly
Flint too far, but his ideas refused to flow in orderly sequence.
Wonderingly he stared at his cigar, the tip of which was now glowing
more brightly than before.
And then, suddenly sniffing the air he understood. His eyes widened with
horror absolute. He started forward, gasped and cried:
"_Flint! Flint! The oxygen is coming in!_"
Uncomprehending, the old man still stood there, mumbling to himself. His
face was now tinged with unusual color, and his heart, too, was thumping
strangely.
"_Oxygen_!" shouted Waldron, shaking him by the shoulder. "It--it's
leaking in, here, somewhere! If we can't stop it--_we're dead men_!"
"Eh? _What_?" stammered the Billionaire, staring at him with eyes of
half-intoxicated fear. "What d'you mean, the oxygen? In--in here?"
"_In here_!" cried "Tiger," casting a wild and terrible gaze about him
at the vast, empty trap of steel. "Can't you smell it? That ozone
smell? My God, we're lost! We're lost!"
"You're crazy!" retorted Flint, with vigor. "Nothing of the sort could
happen!" His head was held high, now, and new life seemed surging
through that spent and drug-wrecked body. "There's no way those curs
could have turned on any gas, here. You're crazy, ha! ha! ha! Insane,
eh? A good joke--capital joke, that! I must tell it at the Union League
Club! 'Tiger' Waldron, suddenly insane, and--ha! ha! ha!"
He burst into a long, shrill cacchination. Already his face was scarlet
and his mind a whirl. Though neither man understood the reason, yet the
fact remained that one of the last great explosions had ruptured a
subterranean check-valve closing the six-inch pipe that was to feed the
storage-tanks; and now a swift, huge stream of pure oxygen gas was
rushing at tremendous velocity into the vast chamber of steel.
Waldron, his heart leaping as though it would burst his ribs, raised a
fist to strike down his insulter; then, with drunken indecision, joined
in the maniacal laughter of the staggering old man.
In their ears a strange, wild humming now became audible. Lights danced
before their eyes; their senses reeled, and violent, extravagant ideas
surged through their drunken brains.
"_Ha! Ha! Ha!_" rang Waldron's crazy laughter, echoing the old man's.
All at once, his cigar broke into flame. Cursing, he hurled it away,
staggering back against the ladder and stood there swaying, clutching it
to hold himself from falling.
There he stood, and stared at Flint, with eyes that started from his
head, with panting breath and crimson face.
The old man, in a sudden revulsion of terror, was now grovelling along
the floor, by one of the massive walls, clawing at the steel with
impotent hands and screaming mingled prayers and oaths. His ravings,
horrible to hear, echoed through the great tank, now swiftly filling
with gas.
"Help! Help!" he screamed. "Save me--my God--save me--. Let me out, let
me out! A million, if you let me out! A billion--_the whole world_! The
world, ha! ha! ha! Damn it to Hell--the world, I say! I'll give the
world to be let out! It's mine--I own it--_all, all mine!_ Ha! Dogs! You
would rise up against your master and your God, would you? But it's no
use--we'll beat you yet--out! _out_!--the world--I own it! All this
plant--this gas, all mine! My oxygen--ah! it chokes me! _Help!
Help!_--Swine! I'll scourge you yet--_absolute power_--_the world_--!"
With one final spark of energy, panting, his heart flailing itself to
death under the pitiless urge of the oxygen, old Flint sprang up, ran
wildly, blindly straight across the steel floor, and, screaming
blasphemies like a soul in Hell, dashed into the opposite wall.
He recoiled, staggered, spun round and fell sprawling most
horribly--stone dead.
Waldron, at sight of this awful end, felt an uncontrollable terror sweep
over his drunk and maddened senses. Though all his blood was leaping in
his arteries, and his breath coming so fast it choked him, yet a
moment's seeming sanity possessed his reeling brain.
"The door! The door, up there!" he screamed, with a wild, terrible
curse.
Then, turning toward the ladder, in spite of his fat and flabby muscles
quivering in terrible spasms, he ran up the long steel structure with a
supreme and ape-like agility.
Fifty feet he made, seventy-five, ninety--
But, all at once, something seemed to break in his overtaxed heart.
A blackness swam before his dazzled eyes. His head fell back. Unnerved,
his fingers lost their hold. And, whirling over and over in midair, he
dropped like a plummet.
By one wall lay Flint's body. At the foot of the ladder, like a crushed
sack of bones, sprawled the corpse of "Tiger" Waldron.
And still the rushing oxygen, with which they two had hoped to dominate
the world, poured through the six-inch main, far, far above--senseless
matter, blindly avenging itself upon the rash and evil men who impiously
had sought to cage and master it!